Not appearing in Google AI Overviews significantly harms webpages: Study

Webpages are significantly harmed when excluded from Google’s AI Overviews, but benefit when included in AI Overviews. That’s according to a new study by Terakeet, a company that focuses on brand management for global brands.

AI Overviews benefits. Webpages featured in Google’s AI Overviews benefit from increased traffic, regardless of their original ranking. Of note:

• Top-ranked (transactional queries): Webpages included in AI Overview had 3.2x as many clicks as pages that were excluded.
• Lower-ranked (informational queries): Webpages appearing in AI Overviews had 2x as many clicks compared to webpages that appeared on a SERP with no AI Overviews.
• Lower-ranked (transactional queries): Webpages included in AI Overviews had 3.6x as many clicks versus results without AI Overviews.
• Top-ranked (transactional queries): Webpages with a presence in AI Overviews had 3.2x as many clicks compared to webpages excluded by AI Overviews.

Informational vs. transactional queries. Webpages benefit, regardless of intent, according to the study. Also:

• Informational: AI Overviews diverted traffic from webpages in Positions 1-2 but increased traffic for webpages appearing in Positions 3-10.
• Transactional: Webpages included in AI Overviews get more traffic, regardless of position on Page 1 of Google.

Why we care. The presence of Google AI Overviews changes how searchers behave and can shift traffic away from pages that once traditionally dominated organic results. If you’ve relied on visibility from appearing in top Google SERP positions in recent years, you should no longer assume traffic will follow.

What they’re saying. The report’s author, Adi Srikanth, senior data scientist at Terakeet, said:

• “…We can say that generally speaking, being excluded from an [AI Overviews] has measurable and significant harms for a webpage. Conversely, being included in an [AI Overview] has clear benefits for webpages. And overall, the presence of [AI Overviews] dramatically changes web traffic across webpages.”

Impact on traffic. Education technology company Chegg is suing Google due to the negative impact of AI Overviews on its traffic and revenue. We also got some additional fresh insights on the traffic impact of AI Overviews from a pair of earnings calls from NerdWallet and Ziff Davis.

• NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen: “We’re seeing these features do a really good job of answering simple educational questions, and that’s affecting traffic to some of our non-commercial pages.” (Link)
• Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah: “AI Overviews results are present in just 12% of our top queries. … Our analysis of year over year click through rates, specifically comparing queries with similar positions that now include AI Overviews, shows no material aggregate impact on performance. … In our analysis of queries where AI Overviews are present or and then are present today but were not present in the past and our search rank remained unchanged, the overall click through rate is also relatively unchanged. (Link)

The report. Exploring the Impact of AIOs on Web Traffic